Grandaddy's Birthday

Today was Ryan's dads birthday. Lillian's Grandaddy is a huge University of Oregon fan and alumnus. For a gift we took some pictures of Lillian showing some school spirit and framed them. We watched the Oregon game with Ryan's parents, unfortunately Lillian slept through the entire thing.

Tracy's Pregnancy

We took (almost) weekly photos of Tracy starting at week 24 of her pregnancy. Here is a little photo montage of those pictures. The song by Pink Martini we just happened to have and didn't really know about it until we starting looking for some music to add but it fits perfectly.

Namesake

When we were thinking of what to name our little girl we wanted to name her after independent women that have been important and influential in our lives. This is a little background information about why we named our little girl Lillian Mona.
Lillian is named after Tracy's Great Grandmother Lily seen here holding Tracy when Tracy was little. Great Grandmother Lily lived to be over 100 years old. She raised her children mostly on her own after the early passing of her husband. She was very independent and loved life.

Lillian's middle name Mona is Ryan's Grandmother's name. This is a picture of Grandmona (her grandchildren all call her Grandmona, not Grandma Mona and she is one Grand lady) holding baby Lillian. Grandmona just turned 90 and came to the hospital to visit us and meet her Great Granddaughter. Grandmona is also a very independent and opinionated woman. She still lives all on her own and does everything for herself. She also lost her husband at a young age and raised 3 boys without a spouse.

Grandmona's only requirement for using her name was that Lily would eventually be given the opportunity to learn to play the piano. In her early days Grandmona was an amazing pianist. She still plays beautifully but rarely does so. She prefers watching sports and politics these days. In her college days she was asked to move to New York to play with an established singer but she was madly in love with Ryan's Grandfather and decided to stay and get married instead. Luckily she chose love and made all of our lives possible. Lillian was born with really long fingers so she will most likely make an excellent piano player and maybe she will have perfect pitch like her Great Grandmother.

Grandmona made Lillian Mona this beautiful blanket, an amazing masterpiece at any age, especially at 90!! Lillian loves it of course and cuddles with it daily.

Another picture of Lillian cuddled in her blanket made by Grandmona.

Finally we couldn't resist taking a picture of Lily holding a Lily!

Lillian's Best Friend

Lillian and her best friend snuggle together. Lucy (our miniature long haired dachshund) loves Lillian and follows her around everywhere. The moment we got home Lucy was very interested in baby Lillian and became immediately dedicated to following her room to room. Lucy's devotion is pretty cute especially since Lillian doesn't respond much to her.

Lillian In Her Fancy Outfit

Since we were expecting some visitors today we got Lillian dressed up in her fancy outfit that Aunt Devin and Uncle Kevin gave her. Luckily the first picture we got of her she gave us a little half smile.

Still quite content and willing to pose...

...and then our impromptu photo session came to a close.

Rough First Night at Home

Well we made it though our first night at home. After not needing any help at the hospital for 3 nights we ended up making 3 calls to the advice nurse. Our first issue was early in the evening when one of Lillian's legs turned purple. We narrowed it down to her diaper being a little tight but we called the nurse just in case. Our next issue was diarrhea like poops that we were told by the on-call nurse was normal. Then at around 1am after what we thought was a concerning 4 hour feeding frenzy we were again assured by the very patient advice nurse that it was very normal.

Lily's First Day Home

After 4 nights and 3 days we were finally able to bring Lillian home. The trip home we pretty uneventful. Lillian slept the entire way. She seems to do very well riding in the car. Soon after we got home Tracy's parents stopped by to drop of Lucy and Logan (our miniature dachshunds). The introduction was pretty seamless. The dogs were at first very curious but seemed to accept her after each giving her a good sniffing over. After the initial introductions Logan is now somewhat indifferent about Lillian. Lucy however does not want to leave Lillian's side. Whichever room Lillian is in Lucy must be also. Lucy looks very concerned whenever Lillian cries and tries to snuggle as close as possible whenever Lillian is sleeping.

Lillian and Daddy read her favorite book during nightly reading time! It looks like Lillian is laughing along with a funny part of the story. Lucy looks on to enjoy the story too. She can't be too far away from Lillian. She is officially Lillian's dog as of this point.

Lillian survived first bath time at home! She doesn't like bath time or diaper changes. Daddy did such a good job giving her a bath. She is so precious!!

Welcome Lillian!!

Hello and welcome to Lillian's blog.
Our baby finally arrived! She is doing really well! She was born a week overdue after many hours of waiting for the inducing to work and then after quite a few hours of labor. Thanks to a great epidural it was a fun and exciting experience. Overall it was 30 hours from the first inducing which didn't work well and 16 hours from the second inducing which did work slowly. 12 hours of that labor that included any kind of pain, 7 of those were with the epidural and 2 hours of pushing at the end. It went really fast for me but I guess my doctor was close to giving me a c-section because it was taking so long, but I am glad he let me keep trying. He also gave me 15 mins at the end to push until he was going to do an epiziotomy and use the vacuume thing but I didn't need those either because I worked really hard with Ryan by my side! Ryan even looked when she arrived which was something neither of us were going to do. We were lucky to have wonderful family and friends stay to greet her after she was born. They waited until 2 am for everything to be all done and greeted her happily. She had quite the conehead and bruises but those have mostly healed by this point. She was nose up instead of nose down until the very end. She arrived at 12:40 am Tuesday September 16th and weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces and is 19 1/4 inches long. That isn't that big but I guess it was pretty big for my body so if there is ever a next baby it won't be allowed to be late at all. Lillian barely fit and was banged up because of it! I am glad we didn't wait another week, I would have ended up having a c-section if she had been any bigger.Lillian was born perfectly healthy, normal and happy and has been an excellent baby! And now she is finally here!! She is so sweet and doesn't cry unless she needs something. She is nursing well, she is still teaching me how! Ryan and I are so happy and feel so blessed and fulfilled as parents to have such a darling little child. Here are a few pictures we have from Lillian's first few days. Her official hospital pictures can be found here.

Tracy before delivery.

Lillian finally arrived! Here she is all bundled up and comfortable!!

Lillian likes to cuddle on mommy's tummy curled up in a ball kind of like how she used to be in mommy's tummy.

Lillian sleeping in her bassinet in the hospital. We kept her in the room with us the whole time. We didn't want to be without her!
Lillian with Grandma Diona!

The happy new family! The elated new parents!!
Lillian looks like Maggie Simpson with her pacifier and she would suck on it just like Maggie Simpson too!! But we found out at the pediatrician's today that she is not supposed to have pacifiers for another two weeks so she has to give them up already.

The very proud daddy and his little girl!

What a precious, beautiful little girl!!